Sunday, May 17, 2015

In Islamic societies and in many other countries where there are significant number of Muslims, multiple marriages are allowed for those men who are capable in terms of their abilities to support multiple wives. There is a limit on the number of wives a person can have, this limit being 4 wives (4 existing wives, divorced or dead do not count). When a person wants to marry again, the existing wives cannot oppose this, it is sanctified as per law and religious authority. And there are a number of people who do exercise this right, marrying multiple times. In Saudi Arabia, this is exemplified by the royal family, where the king and his male family members would have multiple wives and hence multiple children.
What does a wife do when she is notified by her husband that he is taking another wife ? Well, she really cannot oppose it, no authority in the country would support her. This wife took an interesting approach; she literally decided to make her husband pay for taking a second wife. So, when he was off celebrating his second marriage, she, along with her brother, decided to take the family vehicle, and break traffic rules. Now, crossing a red light would automatically be picked up by traffic cameras, and she got her brother to do this multiple times (she cannot drive since as per Saudi law, women cannot drive, another weird fact) (link to article):

The disgruntled wife took her husband's pickup truck as he was celebrating his second marriage and asked her brother to deliberately drive it through red lights where the licence number could be picked up by cameras.
A video clip that went viral on the internet shows the vehicle driving through a red traffic light, getting caught by the camera and then reversing to repeat the violation, Gulf News reported.
The total fine tally amounted to around 300,000 Saudi riyals, or $80,000.